


let the stars be my sea breeze

by getmean



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Post-Canon, Reunions, Road Trips, Yearning, the passage of time and all that brings with it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-30 04:42:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15744519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getmean/pseuds/getmean
Summary: They didn’t talk for the first few miles, until Mobile was long behind them and they began getting into the countryside. The cab of the truck was boiling, the two of them sweating as they bounced along the pothole filled road onto wherever, somewhere. It was all honeysuckle and dry earth and hot leather, Snafu’s sweat. Eugene felt like he was in a dream, like one wrong word would snap him out of it.





	let the stars be my sea breeze

**Author's Note:**

> my roadtrip au prompt fill for sledgefu week! set during the early 1960s

There was a letter on the table next to his breakfast when Eugene slid into his chair; someone had slopped coffee on it during its journey to the table, presumably, but when Eugene picked it up the Louisiana postmark was visible through it. His heart performed that funny little leap that it always did when he spotted that postmark, somewhere between excitement and anxiety, and he tucked the letter away to consume later, to pour over in the peace behind a locked bathroom door. It always felt covert, almost like he was doing something wrong, but it had been a long time since that feeling had bothered him. 

His brother joined him for breakfast, and Eugene turned his attention to his eggs to conceal the pleased flush of heat he could feel on his cheeks. 

“Plans?” Edward asked, and Eugene shrugged, too busy shovelling his eggs into his mouth to reply properly. 

“Nothin’ before I take a shower.” He grunted, reaching for his coffee. 

Edward shook his head, eyeing up Eugene as he finished his plate. “Jesus, you hungry?”

“Somethin’ like that.” Eugene said, draining his mug as he stood, “In a bit.”

“Whatever.” Edward muttered, a confused half-smile on his face as he watched Eugene leave. “I’m goin’ fishin’ later if you wanna come!” He yelled after him, and Eugene just waved his hand as he thumped up the stairs. 

“Maybe!”

Snafu’s letters always set him with an almost childish feeling of excitement. He was a lovesick teen again, mooning over the slant of Snafu’s barely-legible chicken scratch, keeping the letters all stuffed in an old shoebox under his bed. They weren’t wordy, they weren’t poetic, but they were Snafu’s words and Snafu’s thoughts so he read each one like it held the secrets to the universe. They were on a level: he’d never known Snafu to make an effort even close to that of exchanging letters with Eugene consistently for years. That was enough to make them special. They filled the gap that Snafu’s absence had left, they were a physical reminder that Snafu may still hold Eugene as close to his heart as Eugene still held him. 

He turned the shower on, stepping back from the spray and taking a seat on the closed toilet lid as he pulled the letter from his dressing gown pockets. He smoothed it out, eyes lingering on the careful way Snafu had printed his name, his address. Intimate. When he held the letter to his nose all he could smell was paper, the steadily rising steam in the bathroom leaving it a little damp. If he concentrated, or maybe imagined it, he could find a trace of cigarettes.

Lovesick teen indeed. 

Inside, there was a single piece of paper, the short note taking up most of the middle of the page. _19th july. pack a bag & meet me._ It was just as mysterious and cryptic as Snafu’s letters tended to be, both the ones Eugene had received since they had reconnected, as well as the ones he would watch him write during the war. Eugene turned it over, looked inside the envelope, held it up to the light. Nothing. His mind was racing ahead, going over exactly what Snafu could mean by it. Meet him? His heart surged at the very thought of it. 

The 19th was in three days. Monday. Did Snafu mean to only give him the weekend to think over this? Was this him trying to drag Eugene into his own brand of semi-reckless impulsivity? Whatever it was, it was working. Eugene folded the steam-damp paper back into the envelope, already racing through what he would need to pack. What would he need? The lack of detail in the letter was excruciating: he mulled it over as he stepped into the shower, letting the water sluice over him as he tipped his face up into the stream. 

He wasn’t even sure why he was pretending to consider it. From the moment he laid eyes on the scrawled note inside, he knew he would be packing his bag and letting Snafu take him any place he wanted to go. His life in Alabama was nothing to complain about, but his parents mood towards him only soured more as the days passed and he refused to enroll in university. There was nothing here for him anymore, he didn’t want to ignore that anymore. 

He scrubbed at his face with his hands, pressing his fingers to his eyes as he imagined what it would be like, to see Snafu again. Letters were like a ghost of him, and it had been so long that his face was cloudy in Eugene’s mind. In his head, Snafu was forever twenty-two, young and boyish, that curled head of hair, forever smug and difficult and sarcastic, tanned bronze by the Japanese sun and covered head to toe in a tattoo of mud and grime. 

He wondered how Snafu had changed. He wondered how _he_ had changed, and whether Snafu would care if he had.

\------

Monday morning came and went, and as the sun climbed higher in the sky Eugene began to wonder if this was Snafu’s idea of a joke. His mother and father had left out early that morning to visit relatives, and Eugene had taken that opportunity to sneak a hastily written letter, explaining why’d he’d taken off, into his father’s study. Then, he’d packed his old seabag, dragged down from the attic, and sat out on the porch to wait. 

It was another hot, bright day, the sun dazzling Eugene so completely that he would’ve missed the sudden appearance of the truck at the end of their long driveway if it wasn’t for the crunch of gravel. His heart dropped into his stomach, a sudden terrified anticipation consuming him. It could only be Snafu: the red truck idling beyond the gates as though they were the doors to a church. 

He stood, and the truck’s engine turned off. In the silence, the homely sounds of cicadas swelled, the breeze through the trees. The long, liminal moment stretched, and then Eugene grabbed his seabag and hefted it over his shoulder, and began his walk towards the gates. 

The truck was more rust than red paint, banged up just enough to make it well loved and second hand, not scrap. Snafu was in the driver’s seat, sweat slick at the hollow of his throat and along his hairline. He looked just the same, if a little softer - his face having lost that feline sharpness, the haunted eyes. But still, the same. Hair curling in the Alabama humidity, a familiar cigarette clamped between the fingers resting on the steering wheel. Eugene was sweating too, perhaps less from the heat than the anxiety. Clammy hands. His heart felt fit to bust through his chest, and he didn’t know what to say, mouth dry and brain empty, for once. It felt as though he was seeing a ghost: Snafu, but not quite. Those big pale eyes are settled on Eugene in such a way that he knew Snafu was doing the same hasty catalogue of Eugene as he was doing to him. But they’re warm, that heavy-lidded, appraising gaze. The warm breeze ruffled his sweat damp curls, and a small smile tipped the corner of his mouth. 

“Get in.” He said, and that heavy, Louisiana drawl hit Eugene square in the chest. He didn’t even know how bad he’d missed it until he heard it again. 

So, he got in.

\------

They didn’t talk for the first few miles, until Mobile was long behind them and they began getting into the countryside. The cab of the truck was boiling, the two of them sweating as they bounced along the pothole filled road onto wherever, somewhere. It was all honeysuckle and dry earth and hot leather, Snafu’s sweat. Eugene felt like he was in a dream, like one wrong word would snap him out of it. So he kept his mouth shut, his eyes on the road and not on Snafu’s distracting, tempting profile. 

And then, Snafu laughed, a short sharp bark as he slapped the steering wheel. Eugene jumped, finally, finally turning his head to look at Snafu again. Unchanged and changed. That wide grin splitting his older, softer face, and then Eugene was laughing too. 

“Jesus.” Snafu crowed, “Gene.” His smile was too wild to be anything but genuine, and Eugene let himself get swept up in that. “You really did it.”

“You didn’t think I would?” Eugene shot back, easy, comfortable. Snafu was barely watching the road, eyes roving all over Eugene’s face like he was mapping every inch of him. Maybe he was, god knows Eugene was too. 

“Never.” He said, voice rich with satisfaction as he turned back to the road. His eyes were crinkled with his lingering smile, and despite his new signs of age in his face, Eugene wasn’t sure he’d ever looked as young at twenty-two. The weight of the war had aged him, and without it he was transformed.

“Doubtin’ your powers of persuasion, huh?” Eugene said, and Snafu snorted. 

“Not when it comes to you, boo.”

The pet name is unexpected, enough so that Eugene stumbled over what he was going to say, some semi-smart comeback, and instead croaked, “I missed you.”

It was a little too raw, too honest, and for a moment the only sound in the cab was the rumble of tires on asphalt, the rattle of the tacky Mardi Gras beads looped around the rearview. Eugene turned his head, eyes resolute on the passing countryside as Snafu cleared his throat.

“Hey,” he said, and it was a testament to his change that he wasn’t mocking Eugene for his stammering admission. “I missed you too.”

His eyes were back on the road, but Eugene could tell he meant it. He relaxed into his seat, the leather bench creaking as he made himself comfortable. The inside of the cab was caught somewhere between tidy and a complete mess: everything seemed to have its place, even if its place was definitely not the inside of a truck. The Mardi Gras beads, the swaying Hula girl on the dash and a pair of filthy boots that were obviously a favourite pair of Snafu’s judging by how well worn the leather was. The cab was dusty, beat up, distinctly the vehicle of a man who worked with his hands. Eugene’s heels were resting against a chipped toolbox, shoved halfway under the seat, and a pair of work gloves clung to the busted open glovie, and beyond that Eugene could spy cigarettes, a flashlight, a battered paperback. 

“Where’re we going?” He asked, eyes on the paperback as he tried to work out the title. 

“‘S a secret.” Snafu said, “Strictly confidential an’ all that.” He threw Eugene a smirk, which Eugene rolled his eyes at. He’d given up, and reached forward to pull the book out. It was _Travels With Charley_ , the brand new Steinbeck. Eugene held it aloft.

“So which one’a us is Charley?” He asked. 

Snafu scoffed. “Guess.”

Despite the differences in Snafu, he was still as laconic as ever. Their journey together was a lot of watching the South fly by, the sound of the road beneath them only ever interrupted by the odd conversation, and mostly the radio. Sometimes Eugene would read aloud from whatever paperback book he would find littered within the truck, or picked up from a gas station during their stops for gas, water, food. Snafu seemed to enjoy his narration, always asking him to go on until Eugene’s mouth was dry from talking. 

“I like to hear ya.” Was all he said when Eugene asked him why, which was so honest and sweet that Eugene didn’t have it in him to not read to him from that moment. 

They slept in motels when it rained, and in the bed of the truck, skewed off the road, when it didn’t. Both were equally frustrating. The motels meant separate beds, long hours spent awake and watching the curve of Snafu’s shoulder as he slept on his side. The rise and fall of his breaths. Eugene found himself yearning across the space between them, desperate for the closeness they used to share during the war, that foxhole bond. They had been on the road a week and a half, destination still unknown to Eugene, when Snafu booked a double room for the two of them. They were in some backwater town in Mississippi, barely more than a stretch of road off the highway, and the motel’s neon signs had beckoned them from the clutches of the road.

Eugene was sure neither of them slept. The room was too hot for sharing a bed, the fan beating lazily and ineffectually above them. But they shared it, like they used to share a muddy hole in the same nighttime heat. The wail of cicadas was a far sight from the scream of mortars, but Eugene couldn’t will his body to sleep. His skin felt prickly, on edge, so aware of the closeness of Snafu’s skin to his that he was frozen. Hadn’t he been dreaming of this? Isn’t this what it was all about? 

“Are you asleep?” Came Snafu’s heavy, tired drawl. Eugene shook his head, and Snafu sighed. “You’re tense as a bow, relax.”

The darkness was absolute, that complete, early morning darkness. Eugene felt Snafu shift onto his side, and turned his head just so he could see the vague outline of him. Shadows on shadows. Eugene felt as though they were still in motion, his mind not reconciled with the stillness of his body after hours in the truck. He watched as the shadow of Snafu propped itself up, and then half-flinched as he felt his hand touch his face. 

“Relax.” Snafu said, again. “Do you want this?”

Eugene’s words seemed to come from deep inside him: the admittance of something never voiced. “I do.” 

Snafu’s voice was low, hushed. “Then let yourself feel it.”

He lay back down, and kept his hand on Eugene’s face, the point of contact between them so warm and weighty that Eugene felt sure he would be marked in the morning from it. But he wasn’t, and the two of them didn’t speak of the night again, just loaded back into the truck the next morning and set off on their meandering course of the South. The weather held for a couple days, leaving them sleeping in the bed of the truck, sharing a nest of blankets but somehow less intimate than their encounter in that double in Mississippi. 

They were far enough out into the country that the sky was filled with stars. Like moth holes in the blanket that was the sky. Eugene wondered what exactly the light was that shone through: the light of something divine, some heavenly place? He felt self conscious under it, pulled the knit blanket up over his shoulder so to hide a little. 

“I’ve gotta admit somethin’.” Snafu said, then, lying on his back with his head pillowed on his hands. “To you, Gene.”

“What is it?” Eugene asked, propping himself up on his elbow to see Snafu better. The truck creaked with him, groaning on its axles. Snafu was silent for a long moment, his eyes moving over Eugene’s face as though he were weighing whether to say what he needed to say out loud. 

“There weren’t ever a destination for this.” He murmured, finally, and moved so he was propped up against the side of the truck, sitting. His hand dove in the twist of blankets for a moment, and then resurfaced with his cigarettes clutched in it. Eugene watched him shake one out, dig for his lighter in the pack, and then toss it aside and light one up. “I just wanted to steal you away for a while.” He exhaled smoke into the still night air, swiped a hand through it to keep it from lingering. Eugene wasn’t sure what to say, his throat felt full of words. Snafu’s voice was melancholy, but his eyes were steady on Eugene’s face as though daring him to misstep. 

Eugene thought of the double bed, of Snafu’s burning hand on his face. _Let yourself feel it._ The truck rocked under his weight as he moved clumsily towards Snafu, who spread his knees as Eugene crawled closer. There was a moment, of hesitation, of anticipation, Eugene wasn’t sure which, before he surged forward to kiss him, hand curled against his sweet, stubbly cheek like it belonged there. _This_ , this is what had been building for more than ten years. Through years together and years of silence and years of letters. Snafu’s hand rose to grip a hold of Eugene’s wrist, and tightened briefly like he was about to pull it away. Then Eugene kissed him deep, pressed closer into the warm shape of Snafu’s body, and he relaxed into the kiss, a small, vulnerable noise catching at the back of his throat. Somewhere in his periphery, Eugene caught Snafu stubbing his cigarette out, tossing it behind them.

His hand caught on Eugene’s waist, fingers sinking into the bare skin, and that was enough to make heat rise to Eugene’s face. That prickly, overheated feeling. He pressed Snafu back against the side of the truck bed with a hand to his chest, kissed him harder, half-desperate. The world shrunk to the eye of a needle, a pinprick in the vast expanse of the countryside. Just Snafu’s creaky, banged up red truck and Eugene wedged in close between his thighs. He didn’t know how he’d gone so long without Snafu’s mouth on his. The feeling was everything, it was overwhelming to be held so close and to feel so intensely. He was hard in his pants, harder as Snafu’s mouth moved from his lips to his neck to his chest-

“I think I love you.” Eugene gasped into the night sky, and Snafu laughed, tipping his face back so they could see each other. His hands dropped to squeeze the back of Eugene’s thighs, and Eugene grinned back at him.

“No shit.” Snafu murmured, wonderingly, that smile turning dreamy. “C’mere.” 

He pulled Eugene down to his level with a hand at the nape of his neck. The pace slowing as he let Eugene push him down into the nest of blankets, leaning forward to kiss him deep. “I’ve been thinkin’ just the same.” He murmured, accent thicker like this. He shivered as Eugene’s hand swept over his chest, following the rough line of hair from his sternum to his belly. “You thought about this?” He breathed, and Eugene pressed his face into his hair, breathed in cigarettes and sweat and the heat of the day. 

“Yes.” He replied, honest, feeling oddly vulnerable admitting it. His deepest and darkests. Snafu knew them all by now. “A lot.” 

“Me too.” Snafu said, and drew him in for another kiss as Eugene’s hand skated over the front of his pants, firm enough to have him pressing his hips up into the touch. “Wanted this that night,” He groaned, reaching down to grasp Eugene’s wrist, to bring it back to where he was hard for him. “In that motel.”

“I was too scared.” Eugene admitted, watching as he wiggled his fingers under the waistband of Snafu’s pants. It was surreal, like he was watching another’s hand. Under his clothes, Snafu wasn’t wearing underwear, and the touch of his hand to Snafu’s bare flesh had them both breathing hard. Eugene pressed his nose to the column of Snafu’s throat. “I ain’t scared anymore.”

Snafu just made a small, vulnerable noise as he turned his head to catch Eugene’s mouth in a kiss. “C’mon.” He murmured, accent dripping like honey. Eugene felt his fingers against his arm, and then the fly to his pants was undone and Eugene could touch him how he wanted. “I love you.”

“Fuck.” Eugene bit out, flushing all over like _he_ was the one being touched. Snafu’s dick was hard in his hand, alien and familiar all at once. He kept grinding his hips up, little abortive thrusts into Eugene’s hands as he pulled Eugene closer and closer, his sweaty forehead pressed against Eugene’s cheek as he panted and moaned in his ear. They were a mess, twisted together so close that Eugene felt like they’d never seperate. His arm curled under Snafu’s body, the other caught between them as he clumsily got Snafu off.

“Easy.” He murmured, mouth at Snafu’s ear, and Snafu shivered, a full body thing, as he spilled all over Eugene’s hand, both of their stomachs. 

“Goddamn.” He gasped, hand gripping hard in Eugene’s hair as he shook through his orgasm. “ _Gene_.”

Afterwards, they lay together and shared a cigarette as the sweat cooled on their bodies. The night hummed around them with insect life, the noises almost enough to lull Eugene straight to sleep. 

“You don’t wanna get off?” Snafu asked, gesturing with his cigarette at Eugene’s crotch. Eugene snorted.

“I’m good.” He rolled his head to the side, watched Snafu’s profile in the light of his cigarette for a second. “Doin’ you was more than enough.”

“Oh so it’s like _that_.” Snafu snarked, his eyes crinkling with amusement. “Alright,” He said, loftily, “I’ll get you tomorrow, boo.” He passed the cigarette to Eugene, and pulled the blankets up around his waist.

“Sure.” Eugene murmured, and grinned when Snafu rolled into his side, nuzzled his face down into his armpit. “Hey, did you mean that, what you said?”

“‘Bout what?” Snafu drawled, those big, eerie eyes trained on him. His orgasm had left him loose, playful, but his eyelids were heavy, not far from sleep. Eugene smoothed his thumb over his cheekbone, unbearable affection rising in him. 

“”Bout stealin’ me away.”

“We been writin’ for years now, Gene.” Snafu murmured, shifting to rest his cheek on Eugene’s chest, letting his heavy eyes slip closed. “Ain’t like nothin’ would’ve happened if I didn’t. Of course I meant it.” 

Silence followed as the two of them lay there, entwined in the blankets, listening to the breeze shift through the trees above them. A toad was croaking nearby, and Eugene listened as a chorus began to chime in. “Just makin’ sure.” He said, quiet. “I’m glad you did.”

Snafu said nothing, and judging by his heavy breaths, was already fast asleep. Eugene settled in more comfortably, hand resting in Snafu’s curls as he followed him down into sleep.

\------

The next morning was a late one, the sun already on its way to blazing above them as Snafu began to stir. Eugene was smoking a cigarette, basking in the sun on his bare skin as he watched Snafu sit up and stretch, his back popping audibly as he groaned. He tipped his sleep-puffy face to the sun, already beating down hot on them. Then he grunted, cleared his throat, and hopped down off the bed of the truck to fetch a bottle of water from the cab. 

“Morning.” Eugene said, watching as Snafu swished the water around his mouth and spit it into the dirt. He handed the bottle off to Eugene, wordlessly, and Eugene took the opportunity to grab him by his wrist and draw him into a kiss. 

The truck rocked as Snafu propped his knee on the bumper, inching closer. The cigarette found itself crushed out against the hot black paint of the truck bed, and Snafu’s hand found the open fly of Eugene’s shorts, and the last of the morning slipped away.

Afterwards, they shared a cigarette as the day grew hotter around them. Eugene was half slumped across Snafu’s chest, fingers toying with the dime strung around his throat. The cicadas are wailing in the trees around them, vying with the grasshoppers for their attention. Despite the heat, hot enough to make them breathless, neither of them made the move to seperate, to get back on the road. Smoke curled draconic from Snafu’s nostrils as he spoke his first words of the day. “Can you hear my heart?” He asked, and when Eugene glanced up at him his eyes were distant, staring at his cigarette and past it. 

“Yeah.” Eugene murmured, going back to fiddling with the strung dime. He could; the steady thumping under his ear was almost uncomfortably visceral, but it since it was Snafu he didn’t mind. “Why?”

“Nothin’.” Snafu said, dreamily. “Just want you to.”

\-----

The morning left Eugene feeling pensive, introspective. He watched Snafu’s hands on the steering wheel, the countryside whipping past them, thinking about Alabama, the silent museum-like atmosphere of his parents house. His thirties had a distinct before and after, now. The after being, of course, _this_. Freedom. Diner food and cheap motels and mosquito bites and sleeping under the stars with Snafu. It felt impossible to accept that it would all end, but there was no way they could do this forever. It was too good to be forever. And nothing stayed the same, besides. All he had to do was look at Snafu to know that. Snafu during the war had been mean, easy to bite, as close to semi-feral as a human could get. He was _sharp_ , and it settled over him like a second skin. To look at Snafu now and consider the man he was just showed the test of time. Eugene was stupid to think that time wouldn’t change the two of them.

He stared at Snafu’s hands, tapping along on the wheel to some song on the radio, and wondered whether enough washing had scrubbed the blood from them. He wondered if it had done the same for him. 

“What’s got you frownin’ like that?” Snafu asked, glancing to the side and catching Eugene’s gaze on him. “Looks serious.”

“I don’t want this to end.” He murmured, feeling oddly vulnerable. He didn’t want Snafu to laugh at him.

Snafu cast him a sidelong glance, brow furrowed. “Ain’t nothin’ sayin’ it has to.” He replied, and Eugene just shrugged, eyes on the landscape as it slid by. 

They stopped by a gas station a few miles down the road, and piled out into the sunshine to stretch, use the bathroom, buy some supplies. Eugene dropped a quarter into the coke machine, held the cold glass it spat out against the back of his neck as he watched Snafu pump the gas. He was sweating through his white t-shirt, skin a deep brown from the sun. Eugene knew he worked outside, and it showed. He wondered if he could do the same work as Snafu, wondered if they could split rent, sleep in the same bed forever. He followed him into the store, picking up things and putting them back as Snafu pulled out a thick wad of bills for the gas, cigarettes, water. Eugene had seen the money a couple other times on the trip, and the amount never failed to surprise him. It had never been a secret that Snafu grew up poor, and stayed that way, and Eugene had just assumed that it continued past the war. It reminded him of the gold teeth, and he wondered silently if Snafu had ever cashed them in.

The Snafu buying them cigarettes and food seemed incapable of carving tooth from decaying gum, all curly headed and handsome, with that thick, sweet accent, but Eugene knew better. He supposed that that was what kept bringing them together over all the years; the knowledge of the other’s most dark moments. It wasn’t often a person got to know someone’s soul like that, and Eugene couldn’t see how it was possible to walk away from it. 

Snafu interrupted the rabbit hole Eugene’s thoughts were sliding into, calling, “You want that?” as he gestured to the bag of jerky that Eugene was clutching. The sun was hitting him just right through the window, and even with the shitty fluorescent lighting, he was glowing. Eugene felt a surge of affection in him, so strong that it took everything not to cup Snafu’s sweet face in his hands right in front of the cashier. 

“Nah.” He said, and Snafu shrugged.

“Suit yourself.” He muttered, and Eugene ducked his head to hide his smile. 

Later, in the truck, Eugene turned the radio up, rolled the windows down. The wind ruffled Snafu’s curls wild, and brought with it the smell of honeysuckle and hot tarmac, the smells of summer. Eugene couldn’t take his eyes off Snafu, and he didn’t even want to. It didn’t matter if people changed or pasts stayed the same, all that mattered was that after so long they were back together and worked together just as well as they used to. 

“Let’s never go back.” Eugene said, because he was feeling younger than his thirty-two years and freer than he had in almost as long. The wind was blowing through his hair and he was with the man he may have been in love with since the day they had met. It couldn’t end. He wouldn’t let it.

“And get the cops on my ass for kidnappin’ your pretty self?” Snafu drawled, but his grin looked exactly like Eugene’s felt, and Eugene knew then that he was still the same Snafu. Still the same man who would take a risk no matter the consequences, who would throw himself headfirst into something and not resurface until it felt done. Brave, reckless, impossible.

Eugene slid across the bench seat to kiss him on the cheek, grinning against his stubbled face as Snafu laughed, “C’mon, enough’a that.” He said, “Go on and read me somethin’ in that sweet voice of yours.” Eugene swatted him with the book Snafu nudged his way, a battered copy of Miller’s _Tropic of Cancer_ that looked so old it must have been Snafu’s father’s. 

“Let’s go to Texas.” He announced, settling back against the door of the truck as he thumbed through the book. “Let’s go everywhere.”

“Deal.” Snafu said, reaching across to squeeze his knee. 

The road slipped by under them, carrying further and further from the people they had been.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading :^) you can check out sledgefuweek at our blog of the same name over on tumblr !


End file.
